MERCURIUS

Ensuring a resilient supply of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), such as hygiene products, household products, cosmetics, and food, is an important goal, especially in times of crisis. However, increasing dependencies and a lack of transparency in FMCG value chains are creating ever greater complexity. In many cases, there is a lack of necessary information exchange between the players within the FMCG value creation network; in addition, relevant players in FMCG supply are often not sufficiently known. As a result, risks are not identified or are identified too late, which greatly limits the scope for action by government players (e.g., ministries) and interest groups (e.g., WKO). This results in out-of-stock situations, bullwhip effects, ad hoc reactions, and similar problems. It is therefore essential to identify critical nodes and supply routes in order to support objective decision-making in times of crisis.

The aim of the MERCURIUS project proposal is to create a concept for systemic risk and resilience monitoring that provides a comprehensive overview of the FMCG supply system at national and transnational level. By combining static and dynamic analyses, potential weaknesses in the value chains can be identified and the effects of disruptions simulated. This allows the vulnerability of the population at different levels (municipality, state, federal government) to be analyzed, taking into account social and demographic aspects and including irrational behavior (e.g., panic buying). Based on these simulation results, different resilience factors for FMCG supply can be defined; at the same time, action strategies and their effectiveness in relation to these resilience factors can be evaluated. This allows better statements to be made about the resilience of the supply to the population, which supports the actors within the FMCG value creation network in increasing their ability to make early decisions and take action.

As a key result, MERCURIUS will develop a methodological approach for analyzing vulnerabilities in FMCG value chains. This will be integrated into a combined methodology for risk and resilience management and implemented as a demonstrator in an analysis tool. With the help of this demonstrator, value chains relevant to consumers and industry partners will be analyzed using examples. Based on the analysis results, fundamental options for action to increase resilience in FMCG supply will be defined from the perspective of both consumers and industry partners. The primary focus of all project results is to support and improve the resilience of supply to the Austrian population in times of crisis.